Process Safety with Trish & Traci

The tragedy exposed various deficiencies in safety management and emergency response. It remains a stark reminder of the importance of rigorous risk assessment, effective control measures, continuous monitoring of safety systems, and fostering a culture where workers feel empowered to stop unsafe work. 

Weak signals occur all around us every day, but we often either fail to notice them -- or their significance. It might be an unexpected or unexplainable alarm, a lead indicator that may be easily dismissed as false, or an observation by a worker. Apply the Platypus Philosophy to recognize these signals and make your facility safer.

Inspired by a recent study about DuPont and 3M's knowledge of the toxicity of PFAS chemicals, this podcast discusses the importance of transparency and emphasizes the need for professionals to exercise their ethical judgment and stand up for what is right.

The cause of the explosion was traced back to a heat exchanger at the plant. Written procedures, checklists, redundancy and assessing risks for transient and unusual operations can help avoid catastrophe.

In this Fast Facts edition of Process Safety with Trish & Traci we discuss the lessons learned that led to the four principles of inherent safety as championed by the late Trevor Kletz.  Many lives could be saved if the rules are applied.

A corroded vapor line caused the deadly incident. This episode talks about ways to stay ahead of corrosion concerns and how to better protect workers in case of unthinkable catastrophe.  

Storytelling as a means of communication is a valuable tool to help people learn and retain important lessons. It is not about making things up but rather creating a memorable interaction.

Cognitive biases lead to process-safety events. By getting our brains used to looking for the unusual, we can better manage safety in our facilities. Trish Kerin, director of the IChemE Safety Centre, has staked her entire professional engineering career on talking about a weird animal as a way to try and help people understand and manage their weak signals. Transcript can be found at https://www....

Trish and Traci discuss the response to the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment noting that environmental factors could be an issue for some time. Also, this episode unpacks how ExxonMobil was able to weather a hurricane just five miles from the epicenter without loss of containment. Access the full transcript at https://www.chemicalprocessing.com/podcasts/article/11354264/chemical-processing-p...

Insight into rescue challenges and solutions at chemical facilities. Visit https://www.chemicalprocessing.com for more tools and resources aimed at helping you be efficient and safe.

Turning tragedy into tools to help avoid future catastrophes will help keep workers safe.

The workplace can be so much more for colleagues than simply doing a job and going home. If you want to succeed, you need to listen and communicate as it's the currency of safety.

Practice, practice and more practice makes great emergency response but be careful of the message you are sending.

Unlike the oil industry, we can set the foundation of embedding inherently safer design into how we manage hydrogen going forward. This can be a heated topic and it can get politicized. We need to make sure we're really applying inherently safer design principles when we pick the concept that we are going with, let alone do the engineering down the track

Grandfathered standards from the 1950s along with incorrect blueprints led to loss of life and reputation.

A revolutionary process safety program at a refinery in Blaine, Washington presents challenges in the best ways possible -- by helping operators develop new skills and flex new muscles. It’s always a good day when somewhere in the world a new process-safety champion has been formed.

This episode looks back on the deadly dust explosion that occurred at Didion Milling in Cambria, Wisconsin. On May 31, 2017, the explosion killed five workers and injured 15 others.   In mid-May 2022 a federal grand jury indicted the operator and six management officials on nine criminal counts, including two counts related to willful violations of federal workplace safety standards for grain hand...

The war in Ukraine and the anniversary of Chernobyl bring to light lessons learned from the past and unfortunate worries of today.

Process safety is impacted by automation, robotics, devices and solutions. Whether the impact is positive or negative remains in the hands of humans who implement the technology.  

What went wrong at the Piper Alpha oil rig has taught us a lot about permit-to-work systems. They are in place to ensure control of the ownership and activities of a particular piece of equipment -- it’s about keeping people safe and also understanding the status of your plant.

Good process safety means good reliability …  good reliability means good productivity … good productivity is what makes us money. Sometimes you have to talk about the bottom line in order to get buy-in for process-safety initiatives.

A review of 2021’s process-safety incidents points out that there's nothing new in any of these events; there's no new technology pathway, there's no new chemical reaction or law of chemistry or physics. That means these are all preventable incidents. What are you doing at your facilities to understand these hazards?

If you're relying on humans getting it right every time, you're going to have an incident. The key is making sure your systems are more resilient to humans making a mistake  

The chemical industry has been doing risk assessment the same way for quite some time. This new method focuses on subtle changes, which can lead to degradation of design safeguards.

IChemE’s Trish Kerin ponders that $64,000 question as she and Traci Purdum look back at lessons learned from the Montara oil field incident in 2009.